Mating Systems and Strategies (Monographs in Behavior and Ecology)

Rating:
Summary: a mixed poorly edited bag
Review: I took an upper level college course which is based around this book. The book has the lofty goal of quantifying the strength of sexual selection in various circumstances. It is very math heavy.
The class made up of upper level biology undegraduates, graduate students and a skilled professor seemed to be unanimously confused with a lot of the math that serves as the basis of the book. Some of the main mathmatical points are left dangeling without proper explanations, requiring the reader to do a lot of work to then try to figure it out, and probably still be left in the dark. Matters are not helped by the frequencies of typos and errors, some of which clearly interfere with the presentation of ideas.
This is not to say that the book may not have great points of extreme importance for biology. Its "delta I" factor of the sexual seIection along with considerations of spatial and temporal crowding seem quite valuable. I have some doubts though and think it may try too hard to simplify factors that in actuality may be too historically contingent to put into an equation. In any case this book is a noble effort by the authors which could prove extremely valuable in second edition.